language insights

October 22, 2013

Bad language (and the attitudes behind it) can deliver powerful results in the right hands. The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) just launched a new ad campaign to remind viewers that gender inequality is still a critical issue around the globe. The ads show women’s faces overlaid with the top Google searches on a given day that start with phrases such as “women should,” “women cannot” and “women need to.” The results reveal top searches for depressing content such as:

Women need to be put in their place

Women cannot speak in church

Women should be slaves

UN Women takes the harmful language and gives it purpose in a campaign featuring these phrases coming out of the mouths of women.

Today, I did a search that started with “women are” and the top search was “women aren’t funny” – far from as troubling as “women should be slaves” but still annoying. (I should note that the second most searched phrase was “women are better than men”).